scholarly journals Vision and Causal Understanding

2011 ◽  
pp. 161-180
Author(s):  
William Child
Keyword(s):  
Causal Understanding

scholarly journals Using the Aesop's Fable Paradigm to Investigate Causal Understanding of Water Displacement by New Caledonian Crows

PLoS ONE ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. e92895 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah A. Jelbert ◽  
Alex H. Taylor ◽  
Lucy G. Cheke ◽  
Nicola S. Clayton ◽  
Russell D. Gray
Keyword(s):  
Water Displacement ◽  
Causal Understanding ◽  
New Caledonian Crows

Causal Invariance as an Essential Constraint for Creating a Causal Representation of the World

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia W. Cheng ◽  
Hongjing Lu
Keyword(s):  
Search Space ◽  
Causal Learning ◽  
Causal Mechanism ◽  
Intuitive Reasoning ◽  
Causal Relations ◽  
Causal Understanding ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Specific Description ◽  
The World

This chapter illustrates the representational nature of causal understanding of the world and examines its implications for causal learning. The vastness of the search space of causal relations, given the representational aspect of the problem, implies that powerful constraints are essential for arriving at adaptive causal relations. The chapter reviews (1) why causal invariance—the sameness of how a causal mechanism operates across contexts—is an essential constraint for causal learning in intuitive reasoning, (2) a psychological causal-learning theory that assumes causal invariance as a defeasible default, (3) some ways in which the computational role of causal invariance in causal learning can become obscured, and (4) the roles of causal invariance as a general aspiration, a default assumption, a criterion for hypothesis revision, and a domain-specific description. The chapter also reviews a puzzling discrepancy in the human and non-human causal and associative learning literatures and offers a potential explanation.

Testing the causal understanding of water displacement by kea (Nestor notabilis)

Behaviour ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 156 (5-8) ◽  
pp. 447-478
Author(s):  
R. Schwing ◽  
F. Weiss ◽  
A. Tichy ◽  
G. Gajdon
Keyword(s):  
Water Level ◽  
Water Displacement ◽  
Causal Understanding ◽  
Solid Substrates

Abstract Rooks, Eurasian jays and NC crows have already solved the Aesop’s fable paradigm, using stones to raise a water level to get a previously out of reach reward. Here we test kea parrots on their understanding of water displacement. In Experiment 1, they preferentially chose the water-filled tube over two solid substrates (sand, rocks) within 5 trials. In Experiment 2, they generalised to novel coloured substrates in the first trial. In Experiment 3, confronted with two water-filled tubes, one of which was made unsolvable by preventing the water from rising, none of the kea managed to solve the task. This suggests that their performance in Experiments 1 and 2 was reward association with the liquid-filled tube, without attendance to changes in water level. These results therefore provide no evidence of causal understanding of water displacement and highlight that such an understanding is not required for solving Aesop’s Fable.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document